


Blood and Roses

by ColdCoffins



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: AU, F/M, Fluff, Gen, How to live with your beastman husband, Monster men ye, On going AU, Other, Transformation ( warning )
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 10:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14543160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdCoffins/pseuds/ColdCoffins
Summary: A short story I wanted to write. Just something soft and easy between Gascoigne and Viola.





	Blood and Roses

**Author's Note:**

> I love that beauty and the beast trope, boy I die.
> 
> I dont know why but I listened to Annihilation's -Alien while writing it.

Gascoigne leaned over the basin, elbows resting on the sink edge. Tired, a piece of leather stretched too thin. He cupped the cool water in his palms before splashing it over his face. Droplets fell from his crooked nose,and ran down the damp silver hair above his brow. His body ached deep in his bones, as if he had aged ten years since that morning. He should be used to this, it had become a common occurrence once every month of his life now. It wasn’t a normal occurrence, however. Gods, it would never be normal. It was something Gascoigne would not allow to become normal in his household. It was as it presented itself, a scourge in his blood. A sickness that would rear its head now and then. 

Full moon nights were the worst.

Tonight the beast was in the back of Gascoigne’s throat, threatening to come up as blood and bile. It settled as nausea in his insides and burned an unnatural heat through his skin. It was something a splash of water could not relieve.

Gascoigne raised his head. The mirror above the sink was useful sometime ago, but now thick bandages wrapped around his eyes told of the priests blindness. His blindness told of his faith.

The father didn’t start as he felt a pair of slender arms wrap around his waist. They are soft, softer than his own skin and give off a warmth unlike the burning of his own flesh. He imagined them as fair as he saw them in a memory of small porcelain hands receiving a blood red gemmed brooch.

 

Pale Roses.

 

“How are you feeling?” Viola cooed into her husbands bear back, her lips rested in the valley of his spine.

“Th’ same as always on these nights…” He responded, his voice graveled in comparison to hers,“Nothin’ a splash of water will help.”

Gascoigne felt her palms flush against his stomach. They felt his muscle tighten under his skin and feel the craters of bullet hole scars left behind from a violent encounter with the end of a blunderbuss. Viola is quiet for the moment, thoughtful.

“You are still very warm.”

One of her hands left his waist, and breezed down his arm, to his wrist. There, her slender fingers wrapped around his hand, and lead him to turn around. Viola took her husband from the bathroom into their bedroom.

Curtains flapped in the cool evening gust, and Yharnam city flowed in through the window. The sound of light chatter as neighbors wished each other a safe night, doors closed and locks clicked and the echoes of shouts and gunshots rang off the city’s dark steeple buildings to rally the full moon night’s hunt.

Viola lead Gascoigne to their bed, where she turned him around so the back of his knees meet the edge of the mattress.

“Lie back, love.”

Gascoigne eased his weight down onto the bed into a sit. As he carefully let his back meet the sheets, he heard the soft weight of Viola’s bear feet on the carpet surrounding their bed. He heard her shut the window, she took time to lock it before she drew the curtains close.

The mattress weight shifted as Viola climbed onto the bed. She drew closer to her husband and her soft scent filled his nose.

It was something similar to pale roses and ginger.

Carefully, she rested his head on her lap. Then out come the grooming fingers, they brushed through Gascoigne’s silver hair.

 

“Mmm...perhaps then, trying to carry your wife up the stairs was not such a bright idea?”  
  
Gascoigne sighed. “Man should be able t’carry his wife anywhere.”

“Not tonight he can’t.”

His wife’s words made him frown. He felt old, but he was still a prime age for a hunter, even if his silver hair and tired wrinkles said otherwise.

Henryk briefly came into his mind and he pitied the old man who was far past his prime youth.

Yet Henryk could cleave the skull of a werewolf like pudding and on full moon nights, Gascoigne had trouble lifting Viola without every fiber in his being complaining.

Gascoigne grumbled, “It’s the waitin around that kills me…”

Viola looked to the window shielded closed by curtains. The sky continued to darken. Thought she could not see it, she guessed the face of the full moon, still a paper thin cut of a silver coin had begun to rise.

It was a silent catalyst. It would set the beast blood a flame in the veins of the infected. Any hunter would tell you a full moon made the beasts larger, more fearsome.

Until it hung high, bathing the city in its pale light, the couple could only wait.

Viola knew her husband. She knew he was not the most patient priest in Yharnam.  

However, how patient could one be when only the moon could decided when to make their bones grow and flesh stretch to fit a new monstrous frame.

 

I may be able to help...but I don’t think you would agree.

Viola had not noticed that her fingers had wandered to scratch under her husband’s beard. She returned from her thoughts with a jolt when she heard Gascoigne make a deep content rumble at her touches.

He must have felt her start because he stopped, realizing his animal-like behavior with a tightened jaw.

“Sorry Iy…” Gascoigne cleared his throat in his embarrassment, “....pardon my enthusiasm…”

He can’t see the fine line Violas lips make, but she softened them before she leaned down to place a kiss on his forehead.

“I like your enthusiasm.”

Viola often amazed Gascoigne daily. He found himself amazed daily she had chosen the uncouth foreigner who made his vows to her with a gem of blood.

She would smile at him and find him worth smiling at.

Henryk’s very daughter pointing to the giant, rough, wolf-like stray and saying “this one.”

Yet Viola was patient. She took his new changes with grace. “In sickness and in health”, he supposed.

She was patient, and loosened the leash her husband choked himself at the end with.

“Gascoigne,” Viola spoke with her lips resting on the feverish skin of his forehead, “I could...help it along?”

Viola felt Gascoigne go stiff, skipping a breath.

When he did breath, he cleared his throat lightly again.

“ Viola,” he began, and reached up to take her hands in his own. His palms are rough and calloused from years of wielding his giant axe. Many years before the axe it was a shepherd’s staff.

“M’not sayin’ this because Iy don’t want you. S’not that...definitely not.” Viola felt his hands idly toying with her own, unsure how to approach the subject. “It ain’t me. I’m not about t’let you lie with a dog. A man becoming a dog... “ He draws off, a line creases in his brow at his words- a brief slip into his own self disgust before recovering quickly. “But it ain’t Iy don’t love you. I do! If th’ Gods themselves descended an forgav’ all sins save for myne, if th’ world itself turned upside down I wouldn’t-”  
  
Her lips met his own and it muffled out his sound. They kissed deeply, each partaking in the other’s essence.

Blood and Ginger.  

Viola glided his limp hands to her waste where she placed them on the plump parts of her hips. Gascoigne responded by giving her soft flesh a squeeze between his fingers, making her breath a soft noise into his mouth.

While her hands guided him to touch her correct spots, his mouth meet her chin, her throat. She could feel his teeth, his sharp, enlarged canines on her skin and it roused a thrill from inside her. When he snarled into her neck and she moaned in response.

 

It was a normal brief moment of intimacy.

It was brief, as a drop of water turning to steam on a hot stove. To the couple, however, time had extended in a stretch of being present. When you watch a pot and it never boils. The snail you’re watching takes a lifetime to cross a street.

 

They only last until you look away.

Few things remained normal in Yharnam.

 

Viola feels her husband go rigid, a strangled sound choking forth from his throat. Her hands flew to hold his face, his now quite prominent fangs bared in a tormented grimace.

“Talk to me, Gascoigne.” Violas voice changed, now a nurse trying to stabilize a patent. A calm professionalism. “What do you need?”  
  
“Floor…!” He panted the word. Every muscle in his frame was tight, visible under his flesh like ropes.

The wife helped her husband sit up. She eased him carefully onto the carpeted floor beside their bed where Gascoigne folded over onto his hands and knees. Viola crouched close, and her hands found his face again.

“Don’t fight it because I am here.” She ran her thumbs over his jaw, his beard had grown in thicker already. “You’ll just hurt yourself.”

Here Gascoigne found a flaw in Viola’s otherwise quite reasonable character. She was far too patient and believed the beast he became was still Gascoigne himself. Far too Kind. He knew a beast was a beast. It was a stupid creature that was once human, but now they were no better than any animal you’d keep on a chain or scare off from your flock of sheep.  
  
He was wishing there were chains handy right about now.

 

“Th’ sun...may come up again tomorrow...but I’d like you to still be there as well.” Gascoigne gave an anguished half-smile. He knew it wasn’t so much a smile at this point as his mouth was beginning to look like an over-stuffed bear trap.

“Gascoigne will come back and his wife will still be here. He will find he scarcely left in the first place.” Viola leaned forward carefully and kissed his crooked nose. It was something that would remain unchanged on his body.

“I don’t...have th’ wit to argue you...In a moment...I won’t have any wit at all--”  Gascoigne’s back arched with a deep resounding crack as his spine lengthened. It bunched his shoulders and grew the muscle there.  
Viola was leaned in close, and when her husband’s hand clutched at his midsection, she could hear as his organs resettled into places with wet rumbles. She could not help but wince on her husband’s behalf.

He could not see her face. Her voice would have to remain steady.

“ Is not a wife her husband’s wit? I still must remind you to mind your head around the parlor beam.”

Gascoigne opens his mouth as if to respond but he has found his tongue is made of lead. A deep guttural sound tumbled out instead as words start to flit away from his mind like the flash of a silverfish, he can’t catch them fast enough.

In reality, the scourge blood was increasing its symptoms. It swelled the brain with beast blood and pushed the matter against Gascoignes skull.

It gave him quite the headache, and his heart raced with thick pumps that rolled in blackouts of consciousness.

The tornado in his head began to weaken. It was allowing his senses to come through- smell! Smell air!

His chest worked liked bellows, and he took pumping breaths as his nostrils flared.

 

Smell!

 

A scent did come to him. A scent that surrounded him, close to him. A scent that was hugging him.

It smelled of pale roses and ginger.

 

Gascoigne could not exactly have coherent thoughts at this moment, but his senses told him a small precious thing was near. Right near his neck.

Viola held tight around her husband, though she could no longer loop her arms around his thick neck and barreled, hunched shoulders. She buried her face in the crook near his throat and whispered soft sounds.

Good sounds. They lit a soft light somewhere in Gascoignes swollen brain. These were good sounds. Sounds the small precious thing made.

He huffed a breath in appeasement.

Viola drew back carefully. In her close embrace with her beastly husband, drool from his torn unhinged jaw had fallen on her arm. It turned cold quickly but she paid it little mind.

“There.” She ran a hand through his frayed coarse mane of silver around his head. “ All is well. I am here and Gascoigne is here.”

Gascoigne - he was Gascoigne. The small precious thing. It had a word too. Word! What word?

“Vhh….” A deep sound of Gascoignes own vocal chords marred in a beastly undertone came forth from his jaws. “Vhhh...hh...io...la…”

“Yes.” She answered.

“Vhh...Vio...la…” He said again. He tested the name, reassured it on his tongue.

“That’s good.”

“Vi...ola…” The Beast lowered his head to reach the soft underside of his wife’s arm. He gave it a nudge and an affectionate lick with his tongue.

Viola nearly withdrew at the sensation, yet remained in her sitting position in front of the beast. The warm trail of drool across her arm was unnerving, yet she knew this was nothing harmful. Nothing harmful. This was an affectionate gesture, like a dog. Nothing harmful. Only strange.

“The night has come, Love.” She spoke slowly, letting her words hang in the air. “We should get our rest.”

As a response, Gascoigne huffed his hot breath into Viola’s arm, nosing against its soft inside. Viola paused, her eyes searched her husband’s frame. It was all muscle and bulk now accompanied by extra silver hair sprouting thickly in places. Viola could still read the scars that still remained on his pallid skin. They were warped now, pulled tight over thick new muscle. Like small canyons, stretch marks littered crevices among them. It reminded her of cracked marble.

 

It was him. Well, it was his body.

 

“Gascoigne…?” The beasts wife reached out, her palms cupped her husbands face that was  now distorted under a massive canine jaw. “Gascoigne, do you know who I am…?”

Gascoigne let his head rest in his wife’s hands. His mouth still hanging slightly ajar, a show of pearly fangs, globes of drool dripped off thick lips and into his overgrown beard. He panted openly at her, her starlight blonde hair caught on his furnace breath.

The beast worked his jaw awkwardly. Words were hard now, hard to recall and even harder to speak from his newly formed maw. His mouth was now for tearing flesh and crushing bone- not that he could with the muscles and tendons torn open on his cheeks to give him a canine grin.

Gascoigne’s mind had settled some by this time. The oil separated from the water.

“V….vio...la...LLL….Loove….Vio...la…” The sounds were slopped forth but understood by his wife nonetheless. “Knnnow...Vio...la…”

“Yes.” She smiled. “Yes, I love you too.”  
  
Even in his beast state, Gascoigne could hear the smile in his wife’s voice. It was a smile for him, when his wife should use her lips to be crying out in horror.

 

Too kind. Too patient.

 

The beast felt petal soft lips meet his crooked nose, they lingered, then moved up to kiss his forehead. Then Viola let her forehead meet his own and rest there. The beast breathed in her air, so close to him.

Ginger and Pale Roses. Golden starlight hair.

“The girls are in bed.”  
  
“Ghhhhr….llls? In...bhhhed?”  
  
“Yes. We should join them. Sleep.”  
  
Viola could see as the gears tried to work in her husband’s swollen brain, they tried to rub together. It took a moment, but Gascoigne gave her an awkward attempt at a nod, throwing his head up and down. Viola stood, moving to their bed.  
Gascoigne heard her feet on the carpet floor and as if on some form of instinct, rose on all fours to creep after her. His own weight made the floors creak, his long fingered claws silent in the fabric.

Gascoigne paused when he heard a ruffling sound, it came from the direction Viola went. It was the sound of something being pulled off a mattress. Something that had been neatly tucked now being stripped away. Viola was removing the top blanket from their bed.

The beast made a whine at his wife.

“I’m just taking the top blanket off.” Viola explained, tucking the long draping sheet under her arms. “I’d rather sleep where you are.”  
  
It took some thought, but Gascoigne pieced together his wife’s meaning:

Beds were for people. He was not a person anymore. He would curl up on the floor by the bed. Viola would be in the bed. He would still be close to Viola. But Viola did not want the bed. She wanted him. Viola wanted to sleep near him.

When he heard the soft ‘thump’ of a pillow being tossed on the floor, the beast huffed a noise, a deep aired chuff,  as if to make some sort of auditory response.

“I would like to sleep by my husband. Lie down now, settle down, love.”  
  
Viola had never shared her bed with a pet before. But she had shared it with her husband, and this beast was her husband. Granted, he was...much larger and hairier now. And drooled copiously from a mouth filled with fangs. And had long fingers tipped with sword-like claws.

It won’t be much different. She assured herself. He was already large to being with…

Once the beast was lying on his side, Viola kneeled by him. She touched his bicep lightly, a signal she was near. Gascoigne lifted a grossly long arm, thick as a tree trunk, to allow her space near his chest. Viola laid back, and she let him hug her to himself carefully. She was pressed against hot skin, hot as if under a feverish sickness. The thickening of his hair brushed her back much like a weighty carpet. Gascoigne closed his arm around his wife, and she found herself encased in an all encompassing warmth.  By her head, lay a taloned hand. It could have easily palmed her skull, its black pearly claws tipping the flesh.

No, she would not be afraid. This was her husband.

Viola lie very still, hearing Gascoigne’s breathing like bellows come to a rhythmic timing. He breathed contently, her scent so near and her own warmth a part of his furnace.

It took time. The wife lying awake in the dark listening to the hollows of her husband’s chest fill and exhale. Viola heard something else with her head so close to Gascoigne’s chest. A beating of an enlarged heart, though, faster than it would have normally pumped.

 

Gascoigne’s heart.

A hunter's heart. 

A beast's heart.

 

She held it in small hands.

Of porcelain.

And pale roses came.

Blooming from its veins.


End file.
